American Usage of The Term "popular Sovereignty"
The doctrine known today as "popular sovereignty" was rooted in the American Revolutionary belief that a whole people, rather than a monarch or single individual, could serve as the sovereign of the nation. This was a matter of common agreement in America after the Revolution. As noted by legal historian Christian G. Fritz in American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War, both before and after the Revolution, Americans believed "that the people in a republic, like a king in a monarchy, exercised plenary authority as the sovereign. This interpretation persisted from the revolutionary period up to the Civil War." However as wide spread as this belief in the power of the people was, Americans infrequently used the term "popular sovereignty" to describe the idea. Rather, in expressing this founding concept of rule by the people, they described how "the people" would exercise sovereignty in America and that American government would reflect the "sovereignty of the people." Use of the actual term "popular sovereignty" was infrequent before the 1840s.
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